


De-bugging the Revolution

by stickynote_chan



Series: A French Education on Multilingual Marinette Dupain-Cheng [2]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: And it sucks, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, English, Fluff, French, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I don't speak a single one of these languages beware, Mandarin, Multilingual Character, No Beta We Die as Men, Sign Language, Spanish, Tags Are Hard, Wow These Tags Are Depressing, beware bad translation, i spent 20 minutes on it, listen i wanted angst and friendship, the title is a pun, yes - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-31 05:08:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20109643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stickynote_chan/pseuds/stickynote_chan
Summary: In École Primaire, Marinette learns to rebuild herself based on passion and not sunshine.





	De-bugging the Revolution

Distance makes the heart grow fonder. It only makes Marinette’s collapse.

Her first year (or cours préparatoire) in École Primaire is a series of heartbreak after heartbreak as Chloé turns angrier and meaner. Every spoken word a stomp on Marinette’s heart and every cruel twist of her lips her a stab to Marinette’s soul.

Chloé flounces from their group with a sneer and cruel words. She slaps Rose’s hand, rips Ivan’s card and pushes Nino when he rises up to tell her off. The maître gives her detention and Chloé calls up her father. After that, the maître doesn’t do anything but Chloé doesn’t destroy their things or use her hands anymore. She doesn’t need to do that to hurt them.

She calls Marinette names and whispers lies and giggles at her from across the room. Sometimes, she slips insults at the others in their group but she’s viciously focused on Marinette and only Marinette.

Rose tries to comfort her with sweet words and loving poetics and Ivan gives signs of  _ it will get better  _ after every encounter with her once sweetest friend. It doesn’t help because nothing will ever heal how Marinette feels her being ripped apart.

Her parents try first in French and then in Mandarin, even a fumbled attempt in sign language, but, after weeks and a summer break, they learn that nothing they can do will fix her heartbreak. They give her sweets that taste bitter as her tears, and kisses that feel like whispers. Their love is there but she can barely feel it as she turns her face into her blankets and pillows and cries, cries, cries.

More time passes and the more she doesn’t smile, the more they share concerned looks with each other.

Nino is most sincere in his comfort. His understanding of silence is everything to Marinette as is his absolute resolution to stand by her through everything.

Her parents accept her needs to invite him over constantly.

The first time, he turns to Marinette to chatter to her in Spanish about something unrelated and, instead of looking away or suddenly crying, she focuses her eyes on him and listens to him with an expression that wasn’t tinged with heartbreak, they knew it would be alright. They pour their thanks with filled plates and seconds and thirds and as many snacks in between.

Her parents learn as much as they can between work and business to talk to her in Spanish and she should feel grateful that her parents were wonderful enough to learn another language with their incredibly busy schedules. She will later, but not at the moment.

But it still pulls a small smile from her when they whisper ‘te quiero’ to her one night.

Papa swoops her up in his arms and, where once she would have laughed and screamed in joy, now she can only muster up the need to hug him back as hard as she could.

* * *

Chloé refuses to speak any other language.

Marinette thinks it’s this that hurts her more than anything. It keeps twisting more and more at her heart.

Four times the hate.

* * *

In classes, the maître teaches them history and geography and English which is strange and different and Marinette tastes the words with a grimace as, no matter what, she knows she’s not saying it correctly.

With French, they begin to learn how to write more sentences and bigger words. It’s nice, sometimes interesting and Marinette can almost stand to look down and memorise everything. But when they sit on the floor and learn more fantastical stories to enact, there is a hole where Chloé had once been the loudest and happiest part. Marinette sits beside Nino and they both remain stubbornly quiet when they’re called on to read.

Classes pass by with writing and reading, writing and reading, writing and reading.

Rose loves reading, takes to it with dramatic voices, and swooning, dreamy eyes as she reads fairy tale after fairy tale. One of their new classmates, Juleka, sits beside her one day and holds open their book as she quietly listens to Rose read. She does that again and again for a whole week and, eventually, the rest of the year. She gives Rose a glittery purple pen to write in and, just like that, the two were inseparable.

Marinette watches with barely hidden envy but can’t feel anything more than nice things when Juleka turns to her with sweetness under her soft-spoken words and a bobbed haircut shading her lovely and kind eyes.

Juleka learns Mandarin from Rose.

Marinette only knows this when she gives Marinette a slightly awkward, “没事 (méishì)” after Chloe turns her nose at Marinette and called her an idiot.

Marinette cries and hugs the girl who holds her tightly. She’s awkward with her words but her actions are beautiful.

Ivan joins Rose in their shared love for writing and learning new words and the maître always gives them stars and stickers as they carefully trace out the letters in their books.

Marinette tries to have fun with them, tries so hard to get her hand to write the words and listen to Ivan as he fumbled through the book but her mind always drifts off and her hand turns to drawing more and more and more.

She doesn’t get as many stars and stickers.

Chloé laughs at her, instead of with her.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, I had like ten different sources for this but if some unfortunate French could be willing to impart their knowledge, could you tell me if you call your École Primaire teachers maître and maîtresse? Or am I totally wrong?
> 
> Also, anyone willing to fix up the translation mistakes is welcome. Please. Except for the little kids and the ones learning, they're kind of on purpose. Mostly.


End file.
